(NewsNation) — Democrats are grappling with Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat to Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election, and blame is being cast.
Democratic strategist Joshua Doss and left wing political commentator Cenk Uygur joined NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo to discuss what went wrong for Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
Doss argued that Harris ran a good campaign, focusing on working-class policies, while Uygur argued Harris was a bad candidate, only caring about donors. Chris Cuomo said the results should tell Democrats they need to focus “less on who is woke” and more on “who is broke.”
For the most part, Democrats did not direct arrows toward Harris, who many say ran the best campaign she could have given the circumstances of her 100-day sprint following President Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
But there was some second-guessing on Harris’ running mate pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who one operative said “ultimately offered next to nothing.”
There also was some griping about how Harris’ economic message largely fell flat. And there are larger discussions about the campaign’s polling and how it missed Trump’s growing coalition of Latino voters.
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Some of the vice president’s backers are also expressing frustration that Biden’s decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite long-standing voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s surrender of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
NewsNation’s “The Hill” and Associated Press contributed to this report.